


And We're Bitter Till The Very End

by beetlesandstars



Category: Iron Man (Movies), MC2 (Marvel), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: COMPLETE!!!, Established Relationship, F/M, Identity Porn, Sort Of, Time Travel, a little at least lol, lmao this is like my first attempt at writing in forever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:42:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22434349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetlesandstars/pseuds/beetlesandstars
Summary: "How does it feel, listening to a dead crackhead ramble?"-How, in an alternate universe (where alterations can coexist with the multitudes of fields that make up the wrinkles in space and time) Tony Stark would have handled an imminent threat.
Relationships: Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	And We're Bitter Till The Very End

**Author's Note:**

> Sooooo this'll probs be a bust but I haven't written anything in ages and I suddenly found myself feverishly jotting down an idea after watching one too many Exurb1a vids on youtube and well. The rest is history. 
> 
> Enjoy!!!

Hello. This is the log in which I store my memories. Implanted in my head is that of a minuscule device so precise it no longer gives me shocks each time I try to access it. It’s quite marvelous. If you are hearing this I am oh so sorry to say that I am in fact deceased. Dead and gone, such as one would expect of someone as wretched as me. I am going to assume throughout the entirety of my logging that you have a peanut brain and shall therefore oversimplify every single little thing, science or no. Good luck staying tuned. Adios! 

#

Pepper thinks I’m insane. I know this for a fact, because she told me once, “are you insane?!” 

Although, it is of utmost importance that you make note of the fact that this is not a statement she has made, but rather a question she has asked, it is equally as important you note that this was a rhetorical question, therefore instantly eradicating all and any chance I stood in arguing that my sanity was indeed intact and ready to be exploited, thus royally screwing up my attempt to segue into yet another discussion about a bad thing I had neglected to tell her previously. But never mind that. 

Peppers many accusations against me and my sanity began when I first started launching bombs into the sky just to see them go boom. It was entertaining, I’d say. She’d smack me hard on the arm and tell me she’d leave me if I put myself in harms way again. Funny thing was, I never did understand in what capacity I put myself in harm’s way when I was the sole orchestrator of the entire business. Still, she very much hated things that went boom when friction laid a fat one on its behind. 

But I suspect, at long last, that I might finally have fallen victim to insanity’s claws, and I don’t think it’s particularly inclined to let go any time soon. 

I suspect this because my readings are off. They make little to no sense. The monitor is functioning. No circuits flipping out, nothing wrong with the algorithm. And yet. And yet… 

I cannot confirm it - but if I’m not wrong - and I’m never wrong - there is an asteroid half the size of earth heading, quite unfortunately, in the vague (direct) direction of earth. Nine years from now, there will be the biggest boom of all. A collision to go down in the soon-to-be-incinerated books. Boom! 

#

It’s been a day since I made this claim. I have now quadruple checked the program, asked my A.I _JARVIS_ , done my own calculations for the earth's position in accordance to the pull of the sun and the rest of our little solar system, and there is no mistake here. The asteroid, whilst very much not heading towards us at the moment, will hit us head-on once we’ve reached our position in our orbiting in those nine foul years, and unless we somehow turn the clock back fifty years and started building a very scary intercepting object half the size of the asteroid itself, we are well and truly fucked, I’m sorry to say. 

Now I must decide what to do. It is not a question of _if_ the world will believe me. They will. It is a question of it I want them to believe me, more like. Do I want to tell the world of its coming demise, or would it be more merciful to let them succumb to their fiery death without such knowledge looming over them day and night? A better question would be if the US government would allow me to release this information at all. I could always override their system, but is it worth the penalty? It would not matter if the people fought for me. We will all die anyway. 

What I cannot wrap my head around is how every satellite but mine orbiting the earth missed this. It’s huge! It’s unmistakable! Are we all in a state of denial, all us brainiacs around the world, huddled close to a monitor, dreading what we’re seeing but unable to look away? 

#

It’s been two weeks since my last log. I couldn’t bring myself to access it. I know now there is no stopping the coming impact of the damned space planet. I’ve decided to call said space planet J.C, after John Cena. He once said, “you can’t see me!” and I feel perhaps this is incredibly appropriate. 

I have decided to override every government-owned and otherwise anonymous satellite amongst us space nerds and, to simplify things, block their sensors entirely and redirect them somewhere else. Fool the satellites sensors into thinking there is no asteroid, in disgustingly basic terms. The world will never know what’s coming, and only I will have to bear the burden, only I will have to deal with the end of the world - me and the crazies already in a frenzy over the end of the world - the end is nigh, yada yada. I estimate that it will take a long time, a few months, maybe a year, to complete the process of overriding, but it’s worth it. 

# 

It’s been a few weeks since I last logged any of my progress. Mostly because I have made no progress - at least nothing noteworthy. Thanks to a little tinkering and a lot of sass from JARVIS, I have somewhat prematurely delivered the baby that is a very, very special code. I call it “A Genius,” so that I can say “I need A Genius for this,” and rightfully ignore rather than endure Pepper’s Look of Fond Disgust. 

Anyhow - the code is done, and now that I have used my “Genius,” pun the 73 ways I found I could in fact insert it into dialogue, it is now time to plug her in! Wish me luck. 

# 

It has been two hours since the code’s implantation within the system of each and every satellite. I know my morals are questionable if existent at all, but in my defence, I made a very Grown Up decision today. As I’ve already mentioned, I was not to tell a soul of this impending end, and now, pen and paper and the lot, I jotted down the pros and cons of telling someone what I know. 

Cons 

| 

Pros   
  
---|---  
  
Bad idea! It’s selfish to burden someone with such dooming knowledge… 

| 

BUT I won’t be lonely.   
  
Could sabotage everything and get me convicted for breaking and entering government coding!

| 

BUT It will eradicate my lonesome habits.  
  
Could somehow result in headlines such as _Genius, Billionaire, Playboy, Philanthropist - and a Mousy Liar?!_

| 

BUT I could spin the story around and make myself sound like the merciful hero that needed to seek solace in a sidekick and for once _JARVIS_ just does not cut it.   
  
Ultimately I have decided to tell someone. Namely, Dr. Banner. He is certainly not the only one I would trust with this information, but he is by far the least likely to babble, and, such as I am, he is quite fond of tearing himself down and so I doubt very much that an early death would frighten him much. 

# 

Good news! I was right. It has been a week since I told Dr. Banner that the world would explode in about eight and a half years' time, and he took it surprisingly well. He didn’t say a thing! But he did get very drunk and tell me he was not afraid to die, but he did worry for the wellbeing of the moon, and whether ‘she’ would spin into orbit of another planet or find ‘her’ own way, or if - kids, hands over your ears - ‘she’ would somehow be no more than collateral damage and have no one shed a tear for ‘her’ untimely death. 

Now that he is sober, he’s very stressed. I’ve been holed up in his lab for the past three days so as to, for a second time, collect the data I have already collected because Dr. Banner is thorough down to the bone and twice as distrustful. 

One interesting thing I’ve noticed, however, is the difference in Dr. Banner’s practice in comparison to mine. Where he is quick, I am frustrated. Where he is bored, I am fascinated. Truly, we are the perfect pair. Pair of pals. Pair of buddy-buddy scientists. I am running out of interesting things to say. Haha. Bye for now, oh lucky listener. How does it feel listening to a dead crackhead ramble? 

# 

It’s been five months since I last logged anything. I realised it was stupid to keep a damn _mind-diary_. Nevertheless, we had a breakthrough last night, Banner and I. I would like to say that time travel is easy. Unfortunately, this itsy-bitsy idiotic little thing called general relativity exists and ruins my everyday plans. 

To simplify things: energy and matter (somehow?) distort spacetime! Time runs faster the further you are from the center of earth's lovely mass, which we can measure with two atomic clocks - all according to Einstein's theory, yada yada. Essentially, time is not uniform whatsoever. Whatever your speed is relative to light, light will always be travelling away from you at about 299,792,458 m/s (basically about 300 million meters per second). And this is called special relativity. 

If light travels at a constant speed, no matter your speed relative to it, the universe compensates by increasing your mass and slowing time down for you as you accelerate. This is why, if you send a baby careening through space at 99% the speed of light, it would come back to earth eventually still a baby, whereas those that stayed on earth would be a hell of a lot older or dead. Lovely. 

Then there’s the principle of equivalence. We won’t talk about this, as important a role it plays in all this. Gravity is the curvature of spacetime. Bla bla bla. 

Einstein's field equations for general relativity (which we will need): 

_Rµν − 1 2 Rgµν = 8πGTµν_

If you apply this model to the universe it complicates things a little more. The bastard Einstein had it out for me for sure, figuring out all this bull, giving us a shot at saving the earth or whatever, and with it, a constant migraine. The bugger confirmed mathematically that there is no frame of reference in the whole of creation, and that time is not as fundamental as we thought because it is an entire relative phenomenon. 

Space and time are malleable things. Fermions makes stuff, like electrons. Atoms are quarks and electrons. La la la. Higgs field shit. Google it! 

The earth is orbiting the sun 67 thousand miles an hour. This is problematic. If we could figure out how to bend space and time somehow, or jump through a - 

# 

_Redacted._

#

Sorry. I fell asleep. I had to erase six hours of snoring and ecstatic mumbling. I would be embarrassed but technically you’re the one digging in _my_ head so… I fancy I can get away with that. 

What I was saying is, time travel is about _where_ so much as it is about _when_. This is if the machine is a teleporter. The sun and the planets are also travelling through space, and so is the galaxy - at 1.3 million miles and hour to be exact. How do we rematerialise? Will Banner and I just - end up buried in the ground if we get the calculations wrong? Or alone in interstellar space? Forever? And dying? And the air we’ll be displacing when we rematerialise out of what was previously nothing? And how to account for our density? 985 kilograms per meters cubed. Air, 1.2 kilograms per meters cubed. Thus, a huge compression of matter will occur! Could at worse cause nuclear fusion! 

# 

It’s only been a few hours. I’ve spoken to Banner (he does not know about my mind-diary for it is oh so silly, my goodness) about my internalised dialogue. It won’t work. Teleporting? Too complicated. We’re a few hundred years too early for those sorts of equations, and a few too late to save the earth with them! 

In Banner’s words - “so, wormhole it is!” 

# 

_92 loggings have been redacted._

#

Hello. It’s been a while, for you. A good eight months, to be exact. I grew a beard. Yup. 

You see, and no blame falls on anyone but me for this - but - I went a little bit manic there for a while. Mumbling, paranoia, feverish, insomnia… just my old bad habits checking in on little old me. Spiraled a little. No big deal. I’m totally good now, but it halted our progress a little. Banner obviously kept going without me, but came up empty-handed. The guy’s a basket case on his own, but we work best together, after all these months. 

I told Pepper, too. I told her everything. Here’s the memory - you can experience it in real time and everything! 

_Voice quivering, she says, “you do not think it inherently selfish of you to shield the entire world to its inevitable future? You do not think it morally corrupt and awful such as the rest of us would?”_

_She turns, gaze flying from the hospital window to the bland walls. She wrings her hands together, and she never does that, oh God help him, he’s done it now._

_A beat. He breathes in sharply and croaks, “I do, Pepps, my love, if you would just listen -“_

_“I am done listening to you toy with me,” she snaps, not looking at him. “I have no words to describe how disappointed I am in you. You know no boundaries, you cross each and every new line I draw, and then you dig underneath them to spite me. I might not be half as clever as you, Tony, but I have never - never kept something like this from you. Not for your own protection, even if I knew it would bring you only misery. Even if I knew I wouldn’t be able to pick you up after a rampage of self-destruction. Even if it left you fucking hospitalised!”_

_She sobs, falls to her knees beside Tony’s bed, burying her face in his lap. She cries and cries, and finally, when she lifts her head up miserably, hair strewn about, eyes puffy, cheeks rosy, Tony sees the pressure he has put on her, sees the awful things his constant instability has done to her. And he carefully loses his hold on her in his head, decides that this is it._ This is when I let her go _._

_“I know you’re a hero,” she says, voice still wobbling awfully. “And I know - if we had time… I love you, Tony. But I can’t watch you kill yourself over this. I’m afraid I’m no longer strong enough for this. I’m sorry. I swore I would be, but I just - I can’t -”_

_“Pepper, please, I know -”_

_She lifts her gaze to Tony. Teary-eyed and woeful; hesitates. “You cannot keep asking me to measure my strength in how much I can endure before I break entirely. It won’t do.”_

_She extracts her hands from where they lay entangled with his, stands, smooths out her skirt, and then, with such finality it might as well have upset the entire universe’s balance - she is gone. And Tony does not cry. Cannot cry - not since he was seventeen and his mum and dad took a trip and came back in coffins. So he sits very still, silently, and stares blindly into the unknown vastness of the white hospital walls. He has, at least, the comforts of his numbness, accompanying him in his plight. This will have to do. This will have to do…_

Anyway. Pepper only sends me emails now. She tells me about her cat Neil Armstrong, nicknamed Alien Man, and tells me she’s here, just not really, and she loves me, but not like before. And I tell her I understand, or I don’t respond. It’s nice, getting the emails. I read them when Banner does the coffee runs. He really ought to invest in a coffee maker, but I have a theory going he likes to see me forced out of the oppressing lab air and into an equally as, if not oppressing then mundane, street so as to purchase our beloved macchiatos. 

I’ll check back in again soon, few hours tops, we’re just refining some of our scribbles. Sorry. 

# 

It’s a few hours later and I am back. Though I highly doubt it will work, I cannot reveal what we have found whatsoever. It’s _very_ confidential, you see, and if we somehow survive J.C, we don’t want no nasty little scientist getting their mousy hands on our calculations! Nopety nope, sir no sir, we certainly do not. Anyway, here’s how we’re going to do it: 

# 

_One logging redacted._

# 

I’m only messing with you. No use trying to extricate what I redacted, I just said “you’re a poopy, poopy, poopy clown,” because I have nothing better to do with my time as a rocket scientist and would much rather fool you into thinking I’d reveal confidential mathematical equations that could in theory prove time travel possible. Loser. 

# 

I have consumed three pots of coffee and I can see ghosts but I’ve done it. Once I reach my optimal delusional state I can do anything. I’m literally thinking this at the speed of light. I’m so cool. An egomaniac, if you will. 

Oh dear, I’m ever so rude. It’s been about two years since we last spoke? Which means I started this entire thing almost four years ago. Jeezuz. That’s pretty wack. What’s happened since we last spoke… Pepper still emails me. A little less than before, but still enough to be noteworthy. I am a foul creature at best, and still my fair maiden writes me! How I feel so proud and special! 

Banner and I have busted our balls on the blueprints, but the machine is well underway in its construction. I do not think I could possibly do any harm telling you that. The metallic beast we’ve been building isn't by any means done, but ridiculously _near_ its final bolt’s placing considering we only started piecing it together last week. 

# 

_Redacted._

# 

It’s been two months since I logged last. 4 years and a month since my very first logging. I’m very good with consistency, you have to understand. 

We had to summon Thor so that he could zip a power outlet with little electricity (enough to power all of New York for a year) to test our beautiful child (the time machine for those that don’t speak _Superior Genius_ ) out and take her for a spin. 

Saying it out loud makes our plan sound about as deluded as I feel most of the time, but I suppose I must spill the beans. Our very clever beans. Anyway. What we’re going to be doing, essentially, is travel back in time to 1969 because it is a superior year and from there on begin construction on our little “handle” of sorts which will very complicatedly (is that a word?) push away the asteroid from very very far away so as to avoid all forms of collision please and thank you. 

I will be journeying to the past alone. I might be working alongside my own father so as to set this right. I shan’t comment more on it. I feel particularly reckless today, now that everything is winding down, now that everything is changing, and logging at all feels dangerous. I, such as every other little thing in nature, shall be moving on. 

As for Banner… I must say my fondness for the man has grown immensely over time. He’s clever - certainly better at a lot of things than I am, and I am positive I’d be lost without him. He is my proton to my electron. I love him dearly. I have written him a proper letter, one not hidden away in a little mechanical device in my brain, and I won’t be sharing any of it here. It is for Banner and Banner alone. 

And Pepper. I will not ever stop loving her. I will be travelling to the past, I will grow old and eventually, once my work is done, I will come back to the exact moment I left so as to minimise the lack of substance in the space I left unoccupied, and I will have lived a lifetime without Pepper. And she will have to live a lifetime without me. And it will be torturous, but so long as she finds the happiness she is so deserving of, I shall be content. I hope I come back wiser. I hope I can bestow you younglings with the knowledge of Gandalf. We’ll see. In due time, I suppose. In due time. 

Goodbye. See you in a lifetime. 

**Author's Note:**

> I literally cannot believe you made it through that. Thanks for sticking around, and it would mean the world to me if u left kudos or a lil comment!!! Thank u!!! :)


End file.
